


Scatter World Apart

by musiclily88



Series: Do You Feel This? [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Marriage, Please don't leave, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Post-War, Selkies, Stream of Consciousness, harry has a lighthouse, he's a hermit, it's fine, luna has selkie cousins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-26
Updated: 2017-10-26
Packaged: 2019-01-23 10:34:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12505448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musiclily88/pseuds/musiclily88
Summary: her smile is a knife's edge





	Scatter World Apart

**Author's Note:**

> some Luna/Ginny angst with a happy resolution

Luna’s made of spun gold and silver. Her hair catches all the stray light in the room, such that she looks like she glows from the inside-out. The scar on her right cheek slashes like a knife-edge, metallic and bright; Ginny swears sometimes her skin glitters, especially when she smiles. In the rare event that she laughs, it sounds like maybe the sun will come out again someday.

Sometimes Ginny thinks the only things they have in common are blue eyes and war stories, but then Luna wraps one small hand around Ginny’s freckled wrist and Ginny is undone. “I see you,” Luna murmurs on the bad days. “You’re the brightest one in the room.”

She calls Ginny her morning star, but Luna is so much more than Ginny’s moon. Luna is her love and her light and the reason she feels anything other than fury or rage. Luna turns Ginny’s tears into effervescent butterflies that spiral out into clouds of rose-scented air, quite literally. She curls around Ginny’s lean body and presses their bones together, hips hard and skin pliant.

They both spent so long being tortured, and no one knows how long they’ll take to repair.

-

Luna likes to braid Ginny’s hair, tying in long feathers she finds in their back garden. She talks of visiting her selkie cousins near the Highlands or on the Isles, and Ginny agrees, turning her face towards whatever bit of light she can find in the moment.

It’s late spring when they actually visit Harry, much too cold to venture into the sea near his home but warm enough to sit outside with a cup of tea to watch the sun go down. Harry’s lighthouse illuminates the area even after nightfall, but Ginny always returns inside before the sun completely descends, every night.

Her reticence about the sea makes Luna laugh, a bright sound against the rushing and crashing of the sea. “Maybe my cousins will think you hate them,” she says, as if delighted.

Ginny shivers. “I hate the dark, Luna. I hate the night.”

Luna tips her head to one side, her cheek and scar catching the light in their small guest bedroom. “You’re the brightest girl in the world. You burn from the inside, and you can never be dark.”

-

Some people say that Luna went mad during the war, and it’s a near miss. She lost things, naturally, because they all did, but the things she lost were inconsequential—her fear, her frustration, her desire to belong. 

Ginny is convinced that Luna is every good thing, even if she no longer fears death.

Sometimes Ginny watches Luna trace one finger along the scar on her cheek, and she wonders if it’s comfort or torture.

“I love you,” Ginny says, standing in the doorway.

“I see you,” Luna says, holding out a hand so that Ginny can join her on the bed.

-

Harry lends them wellies, though they’re too big, so he also lends them thick socks.

“Will you come meet my cousins, Harry?” Luna asks, tucking her hair into a navy-blue beanie.

“I’ve met them,” Harry responds, slowly, his tongue like molasses against his palate.

“I’ll give them your regards, shall I?”

“If you like,” Harry agrees.

Luna turns her head to Ginny, brows knitted. “What do I like?”

“Journalism. Riddles. Kindness. McGonagall. Rebellion.” Ginny moves forward to take her hand.

“All right.” Luna nods. “And what do I love?”

“Friendship. Stealing my jumpers. Your family. And me.”

Luna grins, her eyes lighting up like a fire. “That’s right.”

-

They find the selkies near a quay formed of rocks. They lie on the largest boulder, warm in their jackets beneath the spring sunshine. Luna starts to hum, closing her eyes so her eyelids look translucent in the morning sun. Ginny swears she sees blue on them when she reaches out to take Luna’s hand in hers.

They hum together until they fall asleep, sunning themselves.

 

When she wakes up, Ginny finds that she’s surrounded by seals also sunning themselves amongst the rocks, their eyes closed. She sighs, poking Luna’s shoulder with one finger. “Are they okay?” she whispers, her lips against the shell of Luna’s ear.

“Better than we,” Luna replies, stretching her arms above her head.

“Meaning?” Ginny asks, ever-patient, moving one hand to Luna’s chin.

“They get to shed their skin!” Luna declares, leaping up, rolling of the bounder until she falls into the sea.

-

The selkies shed their skin and Ginny promises to keep them safe in her trunk until they’re needed again. Luna’s still in the sea, but Harry’s found his way to the dark-grey boulder by the edge of the water.

“She’s going to die, you know,” Harry says, carding one hand through his fringe.

“One day,” Ginny agrees, jaw clenching.

“Sooner’n you and me.”

“But we’re the foolhardy ones,” Ginny tries to joke, her tone flat.

“We are.”

Ginny sighs, watching Luna float on her back in the freezing sea. “She’s the only good thing left.”

“Yeah. I know.”

-

Harry’s taken to his lighthouse the same way he took to Hogwarts. He knows its ins and its outs, and he manages it with perfection. He protects nearby ships amazingly, and he lets Ginny and Luna have the run of the place. Ginny gives Luna space enough, wanting her to bond with family but not wanting her to drown herself. Their understanding is unspoken and based on hapless, helpless love. 

Ginny thinks that Luna maybe wants to drown herself.

“You’re my beautiful sun,” Ginny says, once, tracing her finger along Luna’s shoulder.

“I’m just a fading nova,” Luna counters, shoving the fingers of one hand into the divot of Ginny’s collarbone. Her other hand traces against the scar on her cheek. “I’m nothing.”

“You’re everything.”

Luna hums, flailing out so that her body takes up the whole bed, like a five-pointed star. “I’m everything.”

-

The selkies like their stay on land. Harry tells them about human life, and Luna stares into the middle-distance, while Ginny stares at Luna.

They all have nightmares.

-

Ginny kicks herself awake most nights, only to see that Luna’s eyes are already open, right blue and directed her way.

“Sorry.”

Luna blinks. “I see you.”

“I know.”

“You’re important.”

“You ought to sleep, love.”

“Later.” Luna sighs, turning over so that her nightgown moves, her left breast showing in the moonlight. “Let me love you more?”

“I love you more than anything,” Ginny promises as Luna’s fingers trace against her thigh.

-

Sometimes Luna’s laugh is like metallic bells ringing, high and unnatural. Sometimes Ginny feels similarly unnatural, feels like her bones are singing and fit to shatter. Sometimes, they both feel eminently fragile.

Ginny feels the most fragile during the times she can’t help Luna, and she feels the strongest when Luna shines like the midday sun. She thinks that she herself catches light off of Luna, that her own light is a reflection in the mirror she holds up to Luna’s beautiful brightness. 

It’s not how things started, of course, mutual light and a lot of love. And it’s sometimes still not how things are—sometimes they forget themselves and each other, forget the world entirely, but they always find one another’s orbit again.

Things started with pain.

Things started with a bloody-cheeked Luna and a wild-eyed Ginny. Neither of them could sleep through the night, not even when they snuck into one another’s beds in their room at St. Mungo’s. They were both ever-vigilant, maniacally so, twitching awake and kicking at one another every five minutes, nonetheless finding comfort in one another’s warmth and embraces.

-

Things don’t end, at least not yet. Things continue. They visit Harry, and they start to include whispered requests of marriage and whispered acceptances when they do. Their things involve joy.

-

Absolute joy is new. It’s new, and it’s fleeting in the same way contentment is fleeting and the same way sorrow eventually dissipates. Ginny’s emotions list over her like crashing or gentle waves, depending, like the waves of the beach outside their small cottage. Luna decorates it while Ginny restlessly rides her broom, wanting the wind to whip at her cheeks so hard they go numb.

-

_Please don’t leave me_

-

At night, the whispers fill their room. Sometimes the whispers are imaginary and sometimes they’re not. Luna talks in her sleep, and sometimes when she wakes up from nightmares the only comfort she can find is to remind herself she’s alive, to use her voice. She also clings to Ginny, wrapping around her gently but tightly, and Ginny doesn’t always wake up. Sometimes Ginny is stuck inside her own paralytic sleep, her own nightmares, but sometimes she wakes up to hear Luna’s litany, her murmured prayers and recitations. She melts into Luna’s limbs and tries to fall back asleep every time, but she only ever manages to once Luna’s already snoring.

-

Sometimes Luna’s smile is a knife’s edge, and sometimes Ginny’s temper is too.

-

They get married on a Saturday in May. Luna wears her hair loose, glitter like stardust on her cheeks, a silver-moon dress wrapped around her body. She clutches Ginny’s hand—Ginny dressed in pale green, softer than she’s ever felt in her life, a diadem perched on her temple. Their vows are sweet, and they say them loudly and teary-eyed. 

Their first dance takes place beneath the stars.

-  
 _I see you. You’re my favourite._

**Author's Note:**

> comment, critique, love on me.  
> tumblr: musiclily
> 
> the next bit is Draco/Neville, btw! things are gonna get weird


End file.
